Authors: G.B. Lindsey
Calvin threaded their fingers, but Will’s hand remained limp, not hindering, not helping either. “You didn’t.”
Will’s smile was a mere shade of itself. “Not this time.”
Discomfort swamped in, old and worn. Calvin’s grip tightened and the corner of Will’s mouth ticked down.
“I’m not mad.” It needed to be said, very badly. “Look at me.”
Will did without hesitating and Calvin was surrounded by the sense that he was expecting to atone, that he deserved whatever punishment his mind had conjured up.
Calvin hated that the words abandoned him right then, hated it beyond belief. Maybe it was the light, but there were colors in Will’s irises that he’d never noticed, had possibly never seen before on this planet, and yes, he was still relatively young, but a certain significance lay in that.
“How do I fix this?” he murmured.
Will’s swallow was a slither of motion. Calvin laid his fingertips against his throat and felt him go still.
“You don’t have to fix anything,” Will said at last, hoarse. “You didn’t break it.”
“Obviously I did something, if you think I have a problem with you after what we just did.”
“Look, there are a lot of things—” He pulled away without even moving, putting an intangible distance between them. Dismay twined through Calvin’s lungs at the barrier he felt settling. “I’ve been stupid. Sometimes I can’t believe I’m the guy who acted that way, but I am. I did. I don’t think any apology will ever make up for the way I behaved.”
“What exactly are you sorry for?”
Will kneaded a hand over his eyes. “Cal, you know.”
“Spell it the hell out for me.”
The pain tripped around the edges of Will’s entire frame. Calvin had to shock it out of him or he’d lose this. His own breath still came too fast and his body still jittered, but he pushed forward anyway, kissed Will deeply when his lips parted. And Will—he was so responsive, to things Calvin never would have expected, but he was desperate that he be given the chance to figure them out. That wasn’t going to happen if he let Will out of this bed before they dug this shard free.
When he pulled back, a glimmer had gathered at the corners of Will’s eyes.
“I don’t know why you’re here,” Will said. “I mean, I want you to be here, all I want is to be with you, but I have a shit way of showing it. I always did.”
Calvin knew he could make Will say the words out loud. But it didn’t matter. Again, he wondered about his dreams, about their sanity or utter lack of it. An inkling of panic trickled through. The advice in those dreams... Timing, always the timing. What in God’s name was at work in his head? He still wasn’t prepared to take the leap and call her by name, not out here where he’d have to acknowledge that everything was real. “Senior year.”
Will’s grip around his elbow tightened enough to pinch. And then he let Calvin go. “Yeah.” He tried for a smile. “That’s the one.”
“We were kids.”
Will let out a jagged, disgusted sound. “And that excuses everything.”
“Wait a minute, what is it you think you did to me?”
Will blinked up at him and Calvin feared he had no idea what snakes he was really dealing with. But Will just slid his palm up Calvin’s arm, hesitant enough to catch his attention, careful enough to console. “You didn’t want to. I did. I made it all about me.”
True, but... “I didn’t have any interest whatsoever?”
“Did you?” The question was unbearably honest.
Even lying naked against each other, Calvin felt himself blush. “Will. Of course I was interested.”
“But not nearly enough.”
Calvin trailed over the hollow of Will’s throat while he thought. “You’re blowing it all up in your head. It wasn’t as bad as all that.”
“Feels worse.”
“No. No, look. You didn’t force me into anything. I was capable of making decisions. I made a bad one. For me,” he added in a hurry, but Will’s expression remained attentive, nothing more. “I might not have been ready, but I was so crazy for you...” He let it drift off where neither of them could touch it. “I could have handled it better.”
But Will just loosed a different sort of sigh, the kind that spoke of end games. “You don’t know how mad I was. I thought I was fucking entitled. I was such a little shit—”
“Hey. Cut it out.” This self-hatred was more distended than Calvin had thought, infected with the profanity Will had rarely utilized when they were younger. What Calvin couldn’t seem to do with his words, he tried with his body, tucking his leg between Will’s until Will acquiesced and their legs tangled together.
But Will didn’t stop moving, pushing up against him, fixing on Calvin intently. His hand wove a tiny circle across Calvin’s spine. “Please tell me I wasn’t...that what I did didn’t...”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were... You had a breakdown. Couldn’t have happened too long after high school.”
Calvin’s sight went pale. “Oh, hell.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes, too hard. “That was cumulative, that was never just one thing. You know how I—”
was
“—am. It builds up and I let it, I don’t pay attention until everything crashes down on top of me.”
Will just looked at him, troubled. “I don’t picture you like that at all. Never did.”
“Well, I was. I just hid it well.” Talking about it with Will didn’t feel taboo anymore. Calvin wondered when that wall had fallen down, if getting the truth out for Maureen had loosened the way for all the others. “I know I didn’t have a bad life. Some of the kids that came through this house...they would have laughed at my ‘problems.’”
“Doesn’t negate that they were problems.”
“Exactly.” Calvin smiled faintly. “These days I get it. But that’s a concept that takes years to dig in. I couldn’t handle it by myself, not you, not us. Not sex. I was supposed to be somewhere specific at that point in my life, and when I realized what
you
wanted, I was so far away from it, I just...”
Gave in.
Got pushed around by my own brain.
“I kept rolling down the hill. Sex became this thing I’d failed at, badly. You became the thing I’d failed at. And then I was in deep, and I didn’t care about any of that anymore.”
Will’s next touch was cautious. Calvin cleared his throat. “But Will, that wasn’t you. That was a monster. It feeds on...on the things that can slice you up. With me, there were a lot of them. Still are.”
“I didn’t help,” Will ventured.
“Yeah, well. You weren’t the only one totally involved in your own world.”
This time Will joined their hands, regardless of the slick still on them. He rubbed his thumb over Calvin’s. “I didn’t know.”
“Neither did I.” Not for a long while. Looking back on it, it was easy to see how the path had curved, how each blow had punched him farther toward the endgame, made him stumble even more. At the time, he’d had no idea. Just day by day disappointments, like everyone had.
“So.” Will paused until Calvin looked at him. “Never?”
Hard to describe how the scope of his life had widened so drastically, until sex was the smallest of concerns. Hard to encompass such a complete, instinctive feeling. “Took a while before I was even interested. It was really nice to finally look at a guy and feel that again.”
Will slid their hands together, palm to palm, his eyes on their fingers. “Hey.”
“Yeah.”
“Why me?”
It was too weighted a question not to meet it head on. Will’s eyes held Calvin’s, dark green and wide open. Calvin gave it the consideration it was due.
“I trust you.” With so much more than his heart. The most overwhelming thing was that he would have trusted Will with his wellbeing even if Will had
never
gotten his heart. There had never been anyone else who both stirred and settled him, skin to soul, the way Will did.
Will stroked up and down his arm in silence.
“Will you stay over?”
Will studied his face, but the motion of his hand never stopped. “If you want me to.”
And if Calvin wanted the night after? The week and then the month? Other things he couldn’t put into words. All he knew was that he no longer felt even a sliver of emptiness. For once, trying to sleep would not be an exercise in waiting.
This time the kiss was just quiet. Accepting. Crazy how familiar this already was. The room was long in shadow, the lamplight a pool of gold that did not encroach upon the corners. Calvin thought of Audrey standing right in this room in his dreams, as if she’d never died, older and more careworn, but even more his mother than ever. “Will.”
“Yeah,” Will said into his neck.
The house felt as expansive as the universe, decades of voices lying silent. “Do you believe in ghosts?”
Will didn’t answer immediately, then he shifted up onto his elbow. “I believe emotions stick around.”
More than that, though. “But not ghosts.”
Will pressed his lips together. “Sometimes I’m not sure why I make certain decisions. Why I go places or say certain things. I’d like to say it’s instinct, but I can’t think what I would have been responding to. Do you know,” he said, bending toward Calvin’s ear as if to impart a secret, “I came back to town only just in time for this job? I just thought I was lucky. To get to pay my respects to your mom. And she was already gone, so lucky wasn’t really what I was feeling. But I didn’t even know she was so sick. And I didn’t know you were here. I was having weird dreams, everything felt wrong. The smart thing would have been to stay in one place. I honestly can’t say why I decided to come back home right then.”
Calvin touched Will’s chin. “It’s lucky you did.”
Will folded his hand around Calvin’s and held on.
* * *
She smiles hesitantly from across the room, and he sits up. He can see her white blouse in the dark, and her bare feet.
“
You shouldn’t have tried to talk to him.
” Calvin’s words carry, but he knows Will won’t hear, won’t wake.
She comes closer, and her hands rise and fall at her sides, a tiny shrug. “
I
botched that up pretty well.
Right from the beginning.
”
In the bed beside him, Will lies with his head turned against the pillow. The rain-light washes over the side of his face, gleaming on the fine hairs on his cheek. Everything is muted, like the trickle of water from under the surface of a pool.
Calvin’s bareness doesn’t bother him. The air slinks comfortably around his shoulders, and even though she stands ten feet away, there is no embarrassment to push away, no sense of impropriety. The world is veiled, as if the very air might become visible. Calvin smiles at his mother, and she returns it, her relief clear.
She approaches, sits carefully on the edge of the bed, and the world narrows further until Will is gone, the room vanishing into darkness and rain.
“
I
am sorry
,” she says.
“
You could have hurt him
,” Calvin murmurs, and Audrey sighs.
“
I
thought I could reach him.
I
thought
,
once he got closer...
” One side of her mouth twists into a smile. “
But he’s not you.
”
“
Can I tell him about you?
”
Her eyes widen and she grips his wrist where it rests against the blanket. “
Honey
,
you can tell him whatever you want to.
Truthfully?
” Her eyes flick down and back. “
I’d be honored.
”
Calvin twists until he can clasp her hand palm to palm. Her warmth is so familiar, as if he’d only last held her yesterday. “
Wonder if he’d even believe me.
”
“
I
don’t think my brand of help would actually
,
well
,
help.
”
He chuckles, and her expression calms. She brushes his hair back from his temple. “
I’m glad for you
,
Cal.
”
“
Me
,
too
,” he says. “
Me
,
too.
”
* * *
Will’s hair had a lot of gold in it, snaking through the red and shining like an aura where the sunlight touched. It looked as though Calvin could put his fingers through it and feel real heat, a vibration, something. It took him three tries to touch Will’s hair. The strands were soft, smooth from sweat just above his temple.
Will’s jaw clenched. He exhaled a long, bodily sigh, and when he turned his head, the sun fell across the tendon in his throat, a study in cream and shadow. His eyes moved steadily beneath their lids. Dreaming, then. An odd chill slithered down Calvin’s back and he looked around the room. It was empty. Of course. Except for how it felt as though there might be someone there, out of sight.
“No more nightmares,” he warned. The breeze was all that answered. He couldn’t recall opening the window last night. It had been closed when they came into the room, he remembered that. Last thing they’d needed was someone overhearing them, particularly Danny. And now it was cracked, letting the sounds of birds in.
His skin goose-pimpled.
He’d never had a morning after. There was a restlessness to it, a strange need to be anywhere but here, lying in bed and waiting for...what, exactly? Every second was one closer to the moment Will woke up and remembered where he was. Calvin ached to act, to do
something
. But he wasn’t sure what. The idea of leaving the bed was even more unsettling.
Will moved again, turning onto his side to face Calvin. His eyelids fluttered, his breathing falling out of rhythm. One hand slid sluggishly across the sheet between them, fingers seeking, curling into the bedding.
If the first thing in Will’s eyes was wary, or worse, indifferent... Calvin didn’t think he could articulate what sex with Will meant to him, but one look, one flicker of Will’s eyes, could tell him more than he ever wanted to know.
Calvin released a breath, gathered Will’s hand into his, and Will’s eyes finally opened.
He gave a groan and covered his face, blocking a stripe of sunlight. When he blinked, his nose scrunched up, snapping the years off so fast that Calvin chuckled.